Support Contract Benefits

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PLA Support Contract

Your PLA Support Contract will help you get the most out of your PLA product. As long as your Support Contract is valid, you will enjoy the entire range of benefits outlined in the table below. The first year of your Support Contract is included in every product purchase.

With Support Contract

Without Support Contract

Access to 1st level support

O

O

Access to 2nd level support

O

O

Priority support

O

Target response time

1 Business Day

5 Business Days

Updates & Upgrades

O

O

Notification Service

O

Discounted training rates

O

O

: included, free of charge

O

: not included, but available for a fee

1st level and 2nd level support

We distinguish between 1st level and 2nd level support. By 1st level support, we mean technical support and installation support. This kind of support is always available irrespective of the status of your Support Contract.

2nd level support however is reserved for customers with active Support Contract. It includes statistical and other scientific support by a team of biostatisticians and (bio-)chemists.

Priority Support and Target Response Time

For supporting PLA users, we set up the PLA Support Portal. At the core of this portal is a ticketing systems. Users send us support requests ("tickets") that our support team will then be working on. Support requests from customers with support contract get a higher priority and benefit from a much shorter target response time. An active PLA Support Contract also entitles you to receive priority support via phone.

What is the difference between updates and upgrades?

An upgrade is a major change of the system. An upgrade is represented by a change in the first two number groups of the version number. For example, a version change from PLA 2.0 to PLA 2.1 or from PLA 2.1 to PLA 3.0 would be an upgrade.

An Update is only a minor change of the system. For the PLA 2.x series a minor change is shown by the build number. For the PLA 3.x series a minor change is represented in the third number group of the product version e.g. from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1.

Customers with active PLA Support Contract get updates and upgrades to their licensed products free of charge. This includes updates and upgrades to PLA itself, but also to add-ons such as Bioassay Packages and Data Acquisition Modules.

PLA Version Coexistence

Our PLA software is fully suitable for regulated environments. We are aware that our clients cannot easily update validated software. Therefore we made sure that our major versions (PLA 2.0, PLA 2.1 and 3.0) can be installed on the same computer at the same time without interfering with each other. This allows you to continue using a qualified version with existing assays, while at the same time giving you the opportunity to use new powerful methods in other projects.

With your PLA License you are eligible to install any version of PLA which has not reached its end of life state. You are always entitled to run the previous version on the same computer as your licensed version. When you purchased a concurrent use license of PLA you are also allowed to run different versions on different computers (every running instance consumes one license). If we publish a new version of PLA, you can use it free of charge, if your PLA Upgrade Protection was valid on the day of release. The reference date for the release of PLA 3.0 was March 15, 2014.

Notification Service

We are monitoring the guidances in the US Pharmacopeia <111>, <1030>, <1032>, <1033> and <1034> as well as the European Pharmacopoeia Chapter 5.3 for any change relevant to PLA. As long as your PLA Support Contract is active,we will notify you by e-mail and will make a suggestion on how to deal with that change.

Renewing Your Support Contract

By default, the Support Contract does not extend automatically. About 3 months before it expires, we will contact you and give you a quote for a renewal. If you let the Support Contract expire, most of the benefits are no longer included. However, some of them will still be available for a fee.

Extending the Support Contract for one year comes at 25% of the original list price of your PLA product.

Your Support Contract as a Subscription

We also offer the option to set your PLA Support Contract to autopilot, which means it will extend automatically for another year unless you cancel it. Because this subscription model saves us (and you!) the paperwork of year-by-year renewals, we will discount your PLA Support Contract by 5%.